Norene Jeanette Humphries, 1935-2022
IMB Photo

Norene Jeanette Humphries, an International Mission Board missionary emeritus who shared the gospel in Southeast Asia, died March 10, 2022, at her home in McAlester, Oklahoma. She was 86.

Norene Humphries was born on Aug. 29, 1935, in Wilmot, South Dakota, to the late Dan and Mabel Munsen McDonald.  She grew up mostly in Minnesota. After finishing high school, she went to work as a secretary and mortgage clerk for a company in Minneapolis while attending the University of Minnesota and Minneapolis Vo-Tech School.

In 1958, she met Stacey P. Humphries of Colorado, who was in Minneapolis on business. They were married in 1959 and moved to Denver, where their two children were born and where they became members of Applewood Baptist Church.

Norene wrote when seeking missionary employment that with the birth of their son, God really started dealing with her. At Applewood Baptist she publicly accepted Christ as her Savior. “My life has never been the same since that day,” she wrote.

Because Stacey was in the oil business, the family moved around a lot. They came to McAlester from Kentucky in 1982. Norene worked for the Mills Corporation until her husband of 30 years passed away in 1988.

After filling a special assignment as a secretary in Southeast Asia for the Foreign Mission Board (now International Mission Board), Norene was commissioned as a missionary to Taiwan. She returned to McAlester in 2003 and retired a few years later.

Norene was a member of the First Baptist Church of McAlester, where she was a long-time Sunday School teacher.

She is survived by a son, Stacey D. Humphries of McAlester; a daughter, Robyn Wilburn (John) of Ada, Oklahoma; a granddaughter; a sister Arlene Spurzem (Ray) of Hutchinson, Minnesota; and two brothers, Bobby McDonald of Buffalo, Minnesota, and Wally McDonald of Richfield, Minnesota.

Funeral services were held March 15, 2022, at First Baptist Church of McAlester with burial in Memory Gardens Memorial Park in McAlester.

Donations in her memory may be made to the Lottie Moon Offering, IMB, 3806 Monument Avenue, Richmond, VA 23230, or online at Generosity Resource Center – IMB Generosity

Read an obituary here.